Brain fog, a cognitive malfunction where you lose all focus and you can’t think straight, is a common occurrence that everyone experiences. It can last for minutes, hours or even days depending on who you are and if you have any underlying causes that make it worse.

For me, one of my health conditions has it’s own form of brain fog that is very extreme. My brain fog usually lasts hours to days at the least, and for me it’s not just a case of being “forgetful” and “out of it”.
In my case it’s actually the nerves not properly sending the signals down from the brain.

When it hits, I can’t think straight, or even think at all at times. My nerves don’t work correctly and when it’s at its worst I can’t even form a sentence with my mouth. It is quite frustrating and also really scary at times.

The worst parts are when it hits in professional situations, such as when I’m doing presentations at galleries or when I’m doing a photo shoot. If I get a bad case of it during a photo shoot, I actually have to stop the photo shoot all together and reschedule it for another day, as it gets so bad that I can’t function properly at all, as when it hits my brain and mouth it hits the rest of my body as well which causes a lot of pain.

The fog often hits during less than ideal situations, but if it’s not too bad I push through it as much as I can, as I do with all of my health conditions.

This image is a representation of when the fog hits, as it doesn’t just feel like a little bit of fog. It feels like complete cloud cover that just won’t dissapate.

The Technical Stuff

This image is a lot like all of my recent images in “The Chronic Diaries” series. It is a self-portrait and it was taken with my Sony A7R with the Sony Zeiss 55mm f1.8 lens.

I use the Sony PlayMemories app on the camera/my phone to focus and trigger the camera. It’s a really handy app and I highly recommend downloading it if you have a Sony mirrorless camera

With this series of photos I have always been shooting at f5.6, 50 ISO and usually around 1/100 shutter speed. The shutter speed doesn’t really matter in my images in this series, as I usually shoot the photos in dark places where you would need a really slow shutter speed to get my real natural light coming in. So as long as the shutter speed is under the sync speed for the flash, that’s all that matters to me when taking these photos.

Lighting wise, there was a bare bulb Einstein strobe about two and a half meters behind me, which was pointing at me at around a 45 degree angle and at about 1/16th power.

In post production, I gave it my signature desaturated blue tone, as well as added texture and added the cloud above my head.

FAQ

“Why is the cloud blurry? Shouldn’t it be in focus as the rest of the image is?”
To be honest, I purposely gave the cloud this out of focus look, as it adds to the story. If you think about it, when brain fog hits you lose focus and things go all blurry. I made the cloud blurry for that reason.

“Why do you use textures in so many of your images these days? You never use to use textures.”
I never knew how to use textures to my advantage, that and I was too afraid to use them as it was so different from my old, clean style of editing. I also shoot on the same white wall for all of the shots in this series, so it gives the wall a different look each time.
I won’t always be using textures in all of my photos, but for this series and another new series that is coming up, you will be seeing a lot of images with a lot of textures.

In Conclusion

If you have any questions, let me know down below in the comments or feel free to contact me on any of my social media pages or profiles!